Saturday, February 7, 2015

The Freeway

For the longest time, I had a hectic work commute driving from
my home in Mount Washington to El Segundo every day. Anyone who lives in Los
Angeles will agree that our freeways are a brain numbing experience
particularly, the 110 Freeway. The freeway is surrounded by numerous sports
venues, businesses and schools so it’s usually busy at all times of the day and
night.

One Friday afternoon, when I was driving home on the 110
and by driving I mean plodding along at five miles an hour, stepping on the
brake constantly and changing lanes hoping to move a little faster. Ironically
I was in the ‘fast’ lane.

We were moving along at a snail’s pace when the driver
in the car behind me started to tailgate my bumper. The driver continued to tailgate
and stop short of my car’s bumper every few car lengths. I thought, “What a
nitwit” and continued to navigate the stop and go traffic. When you’re driving
that slow on 110 Fwy, you really start to notice the amount of debris along the
inside next to the center divider; hubcaps, busted car parts, Spiderman diapers,
bits of smashed wooden furniture, shredded tires, a broken coffee mug.

Up ahead in my lane, I could see a greenish blue object
laying on the ground over the double yellow line. As we got closer, I could see it
was a plastic toy. I recognized it as one of the two-headed dragon from
Imperial Toys circa 1983. Insane! My car rolled to a stop right next to the
thing so I pulled on the parking brake, popped open the door, leaned over and
scooped it up! Well, this was too much for the driver of the car behind me
because he swerved out from behind me into the right lane, drove around and cut
in front of me. The traffic ahead in our lane had moved several car lengths
forward.

A couple minutes later, there was a long tire screech
followed by three loud car crashes. A little plume of black smoke slowly
billowed from the cars in the lane ahead. I slowly moved into the second lane
and drove past the accident to find out that the impatient driver behind me had
slammed into the car in front of him, who slammed into the car in front of him,
who slammed into the car in front of him. Saved by a two headed blue plastic
dragon sent by the freeway gods!